Catholic Church in El Salvador shuts down rights and legal office
Catholic Church in El Salvador shuts down rights and legal office
The Tutela Legal office's abrupt closure comes amid challenges to an amnesty law. Its archive is crucial to investigations and unsolved cases.
By Tracy Wilkinson
October 2, 2013, 4:59 p.m.
MEXICO CITY — The Roman Catholic Church in El Salvador has abruptly closed its important human rights and legal aid office, which for years, and sometimes at great risk, denounced and investigated the most egregious atrocities surrounding that country's civil war.
The surprise decision became known Tuesday, when employees showed up for work at the Tutela Legal office in the Central American nation's capital, San Salvador, and found padlocks on the doors and guards who denied them entry.
Many in the international human rights community expressed alarm Wednesday and called for the preservation of Tutela Legal's extensive archive, considered a treasure-trove for investigators as well as a valuable repository of evidence in still-unresolved criminal cases.
For some, it was especially ominous that the closure came just after El Salvador's judiciary agreed to hear challenges to an amnesty law that, if overturned, might reopen several prominent human rights cases.
More:
http://www.latimes.com/world/la-fg-salvador-rights-20131003,0,5417586.story
